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Obama, Holder contend homosexuality 'immutable'

AG confirms Justice no longer will defend DOMA lawsuits

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

Barack Obama today contended that homosexuality is “immutable” as part of his decision, announced by Attorney General Eric Holder, that the Department of Justice would not defend a number of lawsuits challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition for federal purposes of marriage as involving one man and one woman only.

“While sexual orientation carries no visible badge, a growing scientific consensus accepts that sexual orientation is a characteristic that is immutable,” Holder explained in his statement announcing the conclusion he reached with Obama.

His announcement came because the Justice Department in the past has defended the federal law, but he and Obama revised the government’s position because of recent cases.

“In November 2011, plaintiffs filed two new lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA in jurisdictions without precedent on whether sexual-orientation classifications are subject to rational basis review or whether they must satisfy some form of heightened scrutiny,” he wrote.

“The president and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny and that, as applied to same-sex couples legally married under state law, Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional,” he said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described the move as Obama simply trying to dictate to America his perspective.

“The president is replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama,” he said. “The president swore an oath on the Bible to ensure that the laws be faithfully executied, not to decide which laws are and which are not constitutional.”

Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel said the actions by government officials who were sworn faithfully to uphold the laws of the United States are nothing more or less than “outrageous.”

“This is a federal law and the federal government, including the Obama administration and the Department of Justice, has an obligation to defend this law,” he said. “This law has been attacked before and has been upheld as constitutional.”

“This is tyranny,” he said.

He said traditional marriage supporters were concerned that the federal government was presenting such a half-hearted defense of the law – in combination with Obama’s repeated political condemnations of the idea of protecting marriage.

“Now it really has become revealed that they have no interest and never had an interest in defending the law,” he said.

Eric Holder

“This is outrageous for an attorney general to do this on such an important matter of law and public policy,” he continued, “That’s their job, to defend it. Not determine what the law is.

“It is up to the courts to address these laws,” he said.

“They’re (the Obama administration) in collusion with, in conspiracy with the radical homosexual agenda to pull the wool over the people’s eyes in American and torpedo marriage,” he said.

Judge Roy Moore, the former Supreme Court chief justice in Alabama and now chief of the Foundation for Moral Law, said his organization has filed an amicus brief in a dispute over the federal definition of marriage.

“I’m glad we didn’t elect to depend on the president to defend our law,” he said. “I hope now Congress will step up and take up the battle where the president has stopped.”

He said such “arbitrary” decisions about a law’s constitutionality have no place in America.

“Basically, he’s not upholding the rule of law,” he said. “Every state that has voted [on the definition of marriage] has approved [traditional] marriage. … When he ran for office he said he would favor civil unions but would uphold marriage. The truth is he wants same-sex ‘marriage.'”

Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles Project, said Obama’s actions are “unilaterally overturning the will of the people, as expressed through their congressional representatives.

“It now falls to Congress to demonstrate true leadership and respond to the 63 percent of American voters who in 31 states have acted to defend traditional marriage at the state level. At the federal level, this American majority has been effectively disenfranchised by the president’s action,” he said “A strong majority in Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act and Bill Clinton signed it into law. Now that President Obama has abdicated his responsibility to defend DOMA, we call on Congress to act promptly to take up the defense of marriage and intervene in the Massachusetts DOMA case.”

A statement from Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association said, “As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he was against homosexual marriage. Many people at the time suspected he was intentionally being dishonest for political expediency, because he thought it would hurt his chances to beat John McCain if he said he was in favor of homosexual marriage. Now the truth is out. He was lying.

“This sets a dangerous precedent when a president decides which federal laws his administration will defend and which they will not. In essence, this changes our government from the rule of law to the rule of one man who decides himself which laws he will enforce and which he will not,” he said.

“The Constitution explicitly directs the president, in Article II, Section 3, to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ President Obama took a sacred oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and he’s not doing it. He’s subverting the Constitution rather than upholding it. He is in clear violation of his oath of office.”

Added John Stemberger, of the Florida Family Policy Council, “It is stunning that President Obama has ordered the top law enforcement officer of the United States to not enforce a federal law which was duly enacted by Congress, the substance of which has also been affirmed by every single state in overwhelming majorities whose citizens have had the opportunity to vote on the matter. The fact that president Obama campaigned to win his office by saying he believed marriage was between a man and a woman, only makes today’s decision that much more duplicitous on his part.”

“One of the reasons we have a Constitution is to prevent opinions from getting in the way of duties. The American people have a right to expect their laws will be defended by the people whose responsibility it is to do so,” he told WND. “One’s constitutional duty should not be optional.”

He said the decision by Obama and Holder essentially to abandon the duty of defense of the nation’s law echoes a similar decision by the governor and attorney general in California to abandon their obligation to defend the state’s Proposition 8, which defines in the state constitution marriage as being between one man and one woman.

That abandonment still is rippling through the case, since it is being argued now just exactly who does have the right to defend the constitutional provision, he said.

“Federal law articulates specific roles for specific entities,” he said. “Here the attorney general has a specific role to do – the fate of this federal DOMA has literally been thrown to the wind by an attorney general who doesn’t want to defend the nation’s law.”

“Notwithstanding any political position, when a public official has a constitutional duty, the American people should expect them to do their duty whether that matches their political viewpoint,” he said.

“The Constitution is more important than anyone’s particular political viewpoint.”

But he said the weight of the Obama verdict is to “contribute to the argument that there’s a constitutional right for people of the same sex to marry.”

Titus explained that Obama essentially is arguing that sexual preferences and choices are the same as race.

But he said since Obama campaigned against the traditional concept of marriage involving a man and a woman, this should be no surprise.

“I think he’s been just waiting for an opportunity to do this. There was no reason for him to do it today [but] peoples’ attention is focused on Libya, gas prcies, Wisconsin,” he said.

“It’s a very crude and crass political decision.”

According to Holder’s letter to House Speaker John Boehner, he said Section 3 “will continue to be enforced by the executive branch” to address the “executive’s obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

But he said should court cases arise, “this is the rare case where the proper course is to forgo the defense of this statute.”

Voters there originally approved a state law defining marriage as one man and one woman back in 2000, only to see it undermined by the state legislature. In fact, the state Supreme Court only months before the 2008 election had struck the state law from the books.

The voters overturned that court decision in the 2008 election, but the dispute has resided in court files ever since.

Earlier, when the California Supremes created same-sex “marriage,” Justice Marvin Baxter was alarmed in his dissent.

“The bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages are ancient and deeprooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy,” Baxter warned. “Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous. Yet here, the majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statute confirming the equally deeprooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law.

“Who can say that, in 10, 15 or 20 years, an activist court might not rely on the majority’s analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were no longer constitutionally justified?” Baxter wrote.

That argument, in fact, is being made now in a court case in Canada, where the acknowledgement of “marriage rights” for same-sex duos is being cited as a reason to strike polygamy laws.

Those arguing officially on behalf of marriage are from ProtectMarriage.com, which was the group behind Proposition 8 when voters adopted it in 2008.

The ADF said the case has the potential to create “years of chaos and confusion in the legal battle to preserve marriage. It could impact marriage laws in up to 45 other states – including the … states where voters overwhelmingly adopted state constitutional amendments…”

The ADF report said also at stake in the issue is:

The common sense idea that every child should have a right to be raised in a home with both a mom and a dad

Whether America will be forced to accept the bizarre, court-invented claim that men and women are interchangeable

Whether Americans will be forced to surrender their freedom to set public policy to a small group of wealthy activists who wish to impose their will on a state or an entire nation

Whether marriage will remain a unique institution that promotes the important interests of children and society…

Whether voters may freely consider their own moral and religious views about marriage … or be forced by violence and intimidation to remain silent

Whether voters may collectively decide through the democratic process that marriage between one man and woman should be protected

Traditional marriage advocates are trying to turn back the stunning conclusions of Judge Vaughn Walker, an open homosexual, who in September overruled more than seven million voters to banish Proposition 8, setting up the appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

His 136-page ruling said, “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.”